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Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Architect for the IBM Storage product line at the
IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor
to IBM's developerWorks. In 2016, Tony celebrates his 30th year anniversary with IBM Storage. He is
author of the Inside System Storage series of books. This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services.
(Short URL for this blog: ibm.co/Pearson )

My books are available on Lulu.com! Order your copies today!
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Tony Pearson receives part of the revenue proceeds from sales of books he has authored listed in the side panel.

Tony Pearson is not a medical doctor, and this blog does not reference any IBM product or service that is intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, cure, prevention or monitoring of a disease or medical condition, unless otherwise specified on individual posts.

I hope all of my American readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! The day after Thanksgiving is "Black Friday", the unofficial starting data for shopping for upcoming holiday presents and decorations. The Monday after that is now often referred to as "Cyber Monday", where many people purchase items on-line.

I thought this would be good time to promote my book series, Inside System Storage, Volumes I through V. These are available direct from my publisher, [Lulu], or from other on-line retailers.

The old adage "Never judge a book by its cover" often leads technical authors to select bland cover designs. I designed the cover art for the series to have a consistent look, but be unique enough to know each book is different. They all have a beige background with black text, three or four graphics representing the various storage themes du jour, and a color stripe spread diagonally across the spine.

Several readers have asked if there was any rhyme or reason for the color of each spine. One guessed it was based on the [electronic color code] used on resistors to mark their value. When I was getting my college degree in Electrical Engineering, the mnemonic "Better Be Right Or Your Great Big Venture Goes West" helped us remember the sequence: Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Grey and White.

I can assure everyone I was not that clever. Here, instead, is the story behind each color chosen:

Volume I: Green
I received a flyer from Barnes and Noble advertising various books on sale. One caught my eye, so I went to buy it, but forgot to bring the flyer with me. A young woman offered to help me find it, but I could not remember the title, nor the editor, but it had a green cover, and was a collection of the world's shortest stories, all exactly 55 words in length, all winners in some high school contest. She found the flyer, looked up the book, and directed me to the shelf. After several minutes of her scanning the shelf by author, I reached for it, saying, "Here it is, the green one. This shade of green will fit perfectly in my collection of green books!" As I stood in line, the young woman told her boss, "That guy buys green books!" The rest of the folks in line overheard her, and all started laughing at her gullibility.

Volume II: Orange
In late 2007, I was under NDA to review the acquisition of a company called XIV. I was disclosed on the innovative design of the storage system, so that I could blog about it when the announcement was formal. This box would have a distinctive orange stripe across the disks. The announcement launch was a big success. Since then, every time the storage sales team needed a boost in sales for the [IBM XIV Storage System], I would write another blog about the clever features and capabilities.

Volume III: Purple
In 1996, I joined a social club called "Mile High Adventures and Entertainment", headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with locations in Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. It was a group for singles to meet each other through social activities and events. A year later, it colapsed under the weight of heavy radio advertising debt. The local staff bought out the membership list, and launched a new club, under the name Tucson Fun and Adventures. It was a big part of my social life.

However, as the owners dropped out, one to start a family, another to take care of her father after her mother passed away, I started 2009 as the majority owner. The economic recession took its toll. Members were not spending as much of their disposable income of fun and entertainment. We restructured the company, revamped the website, and adopted Purple as our official color. Our event coordinators all wore purple shirts, and carried purple clipboards. Despite this major transformation, I just did not have time to run this company while still working full-time at IBM, so I sold it at year end.

Volume IV: Blue
As I mentioned in my blog post [IBM Introduces a New Era of Computing], IBM launched [PureSystems], a new family of expert-integrated systems. Since Volume IV was going to publish shortly after this announcement, I decided on the color blue to match the new door covers on the racks they came in. In less than a year, IBM has already sold over 1,000 of these systems in over 40 different countries.

Volume V: Grey
Chosing a color to represent the IBM Watson computer proved quite a challenge. I finally decided on grey, to represent "grey matter", a phrase often used to refer to the human brain. I picked a shade of grey that complements the three graphics that represent last year's strategic storage marketing themes. My blog post [How to Build Your Own Watson Jr. in your Basement] continues to be one of my highest read posts.

If you were having trouble getting ideas for gifts this holiday season, hopefully, this post gave you five new ideas for your friends, family, coworkers and clients! They are all available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook (PDF) for viewing on desktops, laptops, tablets or smartphones.

Well, it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means! IBM announcements!

Today, I am in New York visiting clients. The weather is a lot nicer than I expected. Here is a picture of the Hudson River through some trees with leaves turning color. Something we don't see in Tucson! Our cactus and pine trees stay green year-round!

The announcements today center around the IBM PureSystems family of expert integrated systems. The PureFlex is based on Flex System components. The Flex System chassis is 10U high that hold 14 bays, consisting of 7 rows by 2 columns. Computer and Storage nodes fit in the front, and switches, fans and power supplies in the back. Here is a quick recap:

IBM Flex System Compute Nodes

The x220 Compute Node is a single-bay low-power 2-socket x86 server. The x440 Compute Node is a powerful double-bay (1 row, 2 columns). The p260 Compute Node is a single-bay server based on the latest POWER7+ CPU processor.

IBM Flex System Expansion Nodes

Do you remember those old movies where a motorcycle would have a sidecar that could hold another passenger, or extra cargo? IBM introduces "Expansion Nodes" for the x200 series single-bay Compute nodes. The idea here is that in a single column, you have one bay for the Compute node, and then on the side in the next bay (same column) you have an Expanions node. There are two choices:

Storage Expansion Node allows you to have eight additional drives

PCIe Expansion Node allows to to have four PCIe cards, which could include the SSD-based PCIe cards from IBM's recent acquisition, Texas Memory Systems.

There are times where one or two internal drives are just not enough storage for a single server, and these expanion nodes could just be the perfect solution for some use cases.

IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node

I saved the best for last! The Flex System V7000 Storage Node is basically the IBM Storwize V7000 repackaged to fit into the Flex System chassis. This means that in the front of the chassis, the Flex System V7000 takes up four bays (2 rows by 2 columns). In the back of the chassis are the power supplies, fans and switches.

The new Flex System V7000 supports everything the Storwize V7000 does except the upgrade to "Unified" through file modules. For those who want to have Storwize V7000 Unified in their PureFlex systems, IBM will continue to offer the outside-the-chassis original Storwize V7000 that can have two file modules added for NFS, CIFS, HTTPS, FTP and SCP protocol support.

IBM Flex System Converged Network Switch

The Converged Network Switch provide Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) directly from the chassis. This eliminates the need for a separate "Top-of-Rack" switch, and allows the new Flex System V7000 Storage Node to externally virtualize FCoE-based disk arrays.

Patterns of Expertise for Infrastructure

The original patterns of expertise focused on the PureApplication Systems. Now IBM has added some for the Infrastructure on PureFlex systems.

IBM has sold over 1,000 Flex System and PureFlex systems, across 40 different countries around the world, since their introduction a few months ago in April! These latest enhancements will help solidify IBM's industry leadership,

Well, it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means! IBM Announcements!

Today also happens to be [Election Day] in the United States, and some have questioned IBM's logic of making major storage announcements on Election Day. During the campaigns, a major theme was to help Small and Medium size businesses, because these are the engines of economic growth and improved employment.

Hopefully, you all saw today's Launch Webcast on these announcements, but in case you missed it, waiting in line at the polling station to cast your vote, or caught without electricity or Internet access from [Superstorm Sandy], it is now available [On-Demand].

The 2U control enclosure can have up to four additional 2U expansion enclosures, for a maximum of 120 drives, or 180TB of raw disk capacity. Like the Storwize V7000, the Storwize V3700 supports a [large number of servers and operating systems.]
Many of the features you already know from the Storwize V7000 are carried forward:

Feature

Storwize V7000

Storwize V3700

Protocols (included)

1GbE iSCSI + 8GbFC

1GbE iSCSI

Protocols (optional)

10GbE iSCSI/FCoE

8GbFC, 10GbE iSCSI/FCoE, Statement of Direction for 6Gb SAS

Cache

8GB per canister

4GB per canister, upgradeable to 8GB

Expansion

Up to 4 control enclosures in a clustered system, each with up to 9 expansion enclosures

Up to 4 expansion enclosures

Maximum Number of drives/TB

960 drives/1.44PB

Up to 120 drives/180TB

RAID levels supported

0,1,5,6,10

0,1,5,6,10

User Interfaces

GUI, CLI, SMI-S API

GUI, CLI, SMI-S API

Thin Provisioning

Included

Included

Virtualization

Internal (included),external (optional)

Internal only (included)

Non-disruptive data migration

Two-directional (included)

One-directional (migrate to Storwize V3700, included)

Easy Tier

included

Statement of direction

FlashCopy

Up to 256 targets (included)

Up to 64 targets (included)Statement of Direction for optional 2,040 targets

Last month, IBM's [Tape and Storage Hypervisor Announcements] included LTO-6 for the enterprise-class TS3500 tape library. Today, the LTO-6 support is complete with support for midrange tape drives and libraries.

There are two tape drive models. The TS2260 is based on the half-height drive, intended for occasional 9-to-5 usage. The TS2360 is based on the full-height drive, intended for 24x7 access. These drives can read LTO-4 and LTO-5 tape cartridge media, and can write LTO-5 cartridge media. The new LTO-6 tape cartridge media is expected to be available next month.

In addition to the IBM TS3500 Enterprise Tape Library, LTO-6 is now supported on all of the midrange tape libraries: TS2900, TS3100, TS3200 and TS3310.

IBM Linear Tape File System Library Edition V2.1.2

There are two levels of [Linear Tape File System], or LTFS for short. The first is the Single Drive Edition (LTFS-SDE), which allows you to attach an LTO-5, LTO-6 or TS1140 tape drive to a single workstation, and allow you to mount tape cartridges as easy as mounting USB memory sticks. This presents a full file system view that allows you to read, edit, create, and even drag-and-drop files to other file systems. The LTFS-SDE driver is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

The second is the Library Edition (LTFS-LE), which allows you to mount the entire tape library as a file system. Each tape cartridge in the library is presented as a subdirectory folder, that you can access like any file system on disk. This was only available for Linux systems, which could then export the files through NFS, FTP or HTTP protocols to other clients. Now, with release v2.1.2, LTFS-LE supports Windows servers, so that you can share the files with other clients through CIFS as well.

Businesses of all sizes are getting buried in the avalanche of data. Data is coming in at faster rates and in greater volumes. The value of data is increasing. Old processes and technologies aren't working. Midsize businesses have the same issues managing the rapid growth of data as large enterprises, but they don't have the same size budget or staff. They need advanced capabilities at an affordable price that are easy to implement.

Speakers for this webcast include Brian Truskowski, General Manager, IBM System Storage and Networking; Ed Walsh, Vice President of Market and Strategy, IBM System Storage; and Tommy Rickard, IBM Director, UK Storage Development.